Christmas is coming and you wish you had something Wolf3D-ish to play? Fingers are itching?

No worry! "Rovio" "Team Raycast" is here for you - with a special Eisenfaust Christmas edition - with a set of exciting new bonus maps, including one (revisited) scrapped bonus map from original "Eisenfaust"!Maps make a good use of "Eisenfaust" features and ideas sometimes underused in the original game.

"Eisen" was a mod of obviously long development, and I'd like to slowly start sharing some "bedind the scenes" trivia of the development of this mod - most things were posted in a more private matter before the release.

Part 1:

First - I wonder how much of you had the sharp eye to see that credits screens are not just white&black copy of the main screen - main screen was polished by me much more as such, and I was too lazy to do the same for credit screens hoping noone will spot the differences, heh heh. Try to see for yourself what I mean

Second - I wonder if you notice that title screen background is based on a screenshot of area in map 2 - but even sharper eyed would notice that it's edited by me later and so it's "screenshot with modifications" - try to find those

If you are even more sharper eyed - you'd notice what DOS game is the mutant pic in the title screen taken from (no spoilers/hints here, but there are not much DOS games with such nice and detailed character screens, so underused in Wolf3D mods so far Cheaters might look at the credits...but cheating is for losers ) I will hint on recoloring of both skin and the "uniform" + adding purple blood to the face manually and editing hair to look more mutanty. I'm quite pleased with the result (and I'm sure it's quite unrecognizable relative to the source), his look and sad/interrogating eyes are quite chilling IMHO and very fitting.

Hope you noticed that the title fonts are the same as "TotenKopf SDL". It's more than a hint to the other mod in development which I hinted is based on advanced modification of "TotenKopf SDL" engine by WSJ. The same for the overall style of credit screens being black&white version of the title screen - clear WSJ style.There might be even more influences of the "other" mod on "Eisenfaust" - but I can't reveal those at this point.

This mod officially started April 2007, right after "Femstein" was released - but actually much earlier, as I started working on it in parallel to "Femstein".

The planned scale was much much smaller...not much larger than "Femstein" 10-month development...and sure not an SDL mod. The engine at this time was WLHacks 16 bit "Femstein"/"False Spear" engine.

Ideas and features that were cancelled from Eisen during work - or were removed in the process:

1. True electric fences - hurt if you touch them.

2. "Hints for Bread" system - originally Eisen had a hint system coded in - for mutants to give the player hints in exchange for a bread item/s collected (and bread had a display on the HUD, like medkit items - coded by AlumiuN). This system was later removed/disabled - but the bread item got left in the game - and gives player 2 points of health.

3. Even in relatively late versions of Eisen - mutants were attacking the player back if shot. That could lead to some surprises on the player, especially when the player not always notices who he hits/"brings to life".All mutant AI credit for the final release goes to Havoc.Sharper-eyed would notice that huddling mutants get back up after you leave the room, not afraid of the shootout scene any more.

4. Metal Detector (which had multiple uses planned).

Perhaps where we had the most problems in the idea process was with part of the mutants feature. Our roadblock was like 40-million-dollar question: What exactly was supposed to be the penalty for killing a mutant? Numerous possibilities were discussed, but we didn't really come to an idea we were all happy with. Tricob put in a "minus 1000 points" penalty, expecting a more interesting penalty to be suggested sometime later. The subject was brought back up at least once, but the discussion - once again - didn't lead to any definite decisions. So the -1000 Point Penalty pretty much stayed the way it was until its release. We don't blame this on disorganization, but rather that the project always seemed to have higher priorities. I myself think that "losing bonus level unlock points" would be much more effective penalty. But again - how hard should we punish for killing a Wolf3D mutant? Yes, you kill someone who didn't attack you, and it's wrong in a way...but still. It's a Wolf3D mutant.

Folks who've been following Eisen for a while probably remember the "Jumping Guard bug" in older versions of the game. This always occurred whenever you shot at a mutant. The odd thing was, when you actually killed someone (enemy or not), that bug actually got much more noticeable. This bug plagued the mod for many, many months, and it's actually Tricob to be the one who started the bug to begin with; when a mutant was shot, he was supposed to "drop" the object he carried, then start attacking. Tricob had told the code to spawn a new Static Object when the mutant was hit. That's what was causing the bug. So he told the game instead to spawn a "dead guard" disguised as a dropped object - and didn't run into the problem after that. After having the bug for so long, it was actually a bit disorienting for him to see the game work properly.

Some of the features were implemented as Ron and Dean mapped. I was very open for the team suggesting additional features, extra types of sprites and walls and would often be able to produce modified or new artwork within days. This was a slow process at times and often meant going back and updating levels but was something we were willing to do with the amount of detail that went into each level.

Each of Dean's levels took Dean a estimated minimum of 20 hours each to produce, with all the re-editing, remapping and revisiting over time. Some of these levels are several years old and as their mapping skills and techniques developed through mapping for Eisen and other projects, they had the advantage to be able to revisit and improve each map. The levels in this would have to be the most tested and reworked of any mod ever released and all are as close to 100% of the mappers likings as you'll ever see.

At times a bug would appear that would halt production of vertually all aspects of the mod until it could be fixed. All the coders spent massive amount of times sorting through the code getting things right and fixing things. The best part is that a lot of these fixes have now been shared with the community and some even appear in the SDL code that is being used by everyone.

To make the weapon animations I've watched weapon reloading on youtube videos.The animations themselves were made from scratch - looking at those videos. I had to see how weapons work (reloading-wise), and divide the sequence into logical pivotal frames. It was quite a hard work to animate the weapons from scratch and I'm quite proud of it - I'm sure it'll be useful for future Wolf3D mods. I wan't lazy and made separate animation for backstabbing.Gewehr shooting seems to be not exactly like WWII Gewehr, I noticed it only after the release looking an modern WWII games. It seems to fire semi-automatic. Still I think it fits perfectly into weapon balancing of a particular mod, does look realistic and merges well into the game.

"Big Brown Badass" (and the related Bosses) was made by me from just 1 standing frame sent to me by WLHack in the early beginning of making Eisen.

"Turret dude" is a mix of a guard and a minigun from MAC version of one of the bosses (Hitler, If I'm not mistaken) - on a recolored stand from scrapped ROTT turret frames.

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We can't ignore here the story of the losing of Eisen source.

Once upon a time..... in the beginning of 2010...AlumiuN was working on Eisen source at the time - with unhuman pace actually. With that pace - Eisen was heading towards release.But during those months - his updates slowly/suddenly stopped... and AlumiuN dissapeared.Slowly - we became very worried. All contacting AlumiuN attempts failed at first.Despite me request for AlumiuN to upload a source with every gamefiles update - this wasn't done, and I didn't enforce it as much as I should've (and did later).So we suddenly had a "near release" project - left with no coder and no source. After so many years of work.Months passed till we noticed AlumiuN dissapearance and managed to contact him over MSN.He told us he didn't back up Eisen code, his flash drive got lost - and Eisen source with it. And he was too afraid to show his face to the forums and tell us about it - so he dissapeared.He said has last backup was from a very old Eisen version, about half-year ago. At least that what he claimed to have - as he never sent it to us.

That was an obvious shock to us. Whole Eisen project was in danger and was obviously headed for scrapping.AlumiuN didn't show any will to help us out (especially as too much of his work was undone) - and even at moments when he did - he didn't show at the forums since then to back his words/intentions up - or send us the source he had.He was still very hard to contact over MSN.

I kept looking for some source - and finally found an old source on my comp from the last time AlumiuN uploaded it with the game files (I was probably the only one to keep it on my comp). We were very happy - despite the fact that it was just one exe version later than of version AlumiuN claimed to have (though never sent to us). But that was a large and important exe update from previous version.This was a new hope for Eisen.

So we started looking for a new coder - and Andy agreed to help.Despite that - this whole thing stalled Eisen for at least half a year, if not more.

We changed our forum rules - and this time enforced DropBox upload of source files with EVERY source file update - Andy did great with version number managing.

We still had AlumiuN's "lost source" exe for reference - and detailed AlumiuN coding updates log at the forum - from each of the lost exe versions.

Andy did alot of work recreating AlumiuN features - but Andy coding skills were limited (at least at the time) to of AlumiuN's - so some features were too hard for his coding teeth.

We started looking for another coder - and I sent a SOS help request to Havoc.Havoc agreed to help - and by that - saved Eisen project from probable doom.

Using AlumiuN's logs and "lost source" exe - he managed to recreate all of AlumiuN's features (at least the ones we most cared about) - and even make them better - including better mutant AI and such stuff. His file system was better than AlumiuN's as well.

At some point we considered making bullets leave holes in the nazi flag sprite.The idea was dismissed by the team for making hard on the player to shoot nazis through it (especially as we already have such a lamp) - and also the holes on the flag might look too big for bullets.

What started as a "Rust (locked) Door" became a "Horror door" later during the project.You can still see the remains of the "rust" in the brown color of the "Horror key" (originally the "Rust Key") - and it the normal Rust Doors. At first those were all brown-colored - but later I came out with it's current look, that makes the rust more recognizable and realistic - merging it with normal metallic color.I did put alot of creative thought before inventing the "Horror Door" art concept.

We used different dark/light variants for many walls - to increase unique look, wall selection and realism.Not to mention the use of Wall Patches - that though were added relatively late - helped alot to create endless wall variants. If we'd use Wall Patches from the beginning of the project - we could save alot of walls spots in the VSWAP.

As you could probably notice - we've left quite a few sprites from the original Wolf3D as a tribute (and also too keep Wolf3D feel) - mostly skeletons and gibs, hanging skeleton etc. (2 other gib ideas came from "Blake Stone".) But also the ammo clip, barrels with little editing - and such stuff. Brown barrels are just recolored (an animated) green Wolf3D barrel. This means recolored back to Wolf3D green it can help many future "more classic" Wolf3D mods to make the barrels more interactive. Barrel animations were made by me from scratch, and I'm quite pleased with the outcome.

In earlier versions of the Eisen EXE, way back in its 16-bit days, there was a *very* interesting bug related to mines. Originally, the mines you ran over just took away 20 health, and didn't check your health status afterwards (You could even walk past them safely if you maneuvered through them at the right angle). So it was actually possible to wander around with -19% Health for a good deal of the game. When BJ's health was far enough in the negatives, the animation on his face was extremely strange, going from the Chaingun Smile image, to the BJ Killed image, to BJ's "Razz" image. Really weird stuff. Also, as Tricob adds, the mines that appeared in the game were originally a pile of tacks. Among other problems, the tacks were very, very hard to see in the green grass, and that's exactly where they were placed most of the time.

In early versions of Eisen:

1. Rifle dude had normal standing shooting frames

2. Black officer was the basic guard

3. WSJ officer was replacing fast black officer

Near the release some art was improved by me - including the MP40 frames, and forest bottom part to be more consistent with normal grass/snow floor textures.

Eisen originally had more advanced shading that could distinguish the indoor and outdoor areas - for much more realistic results and to allow stronger fog which I very wanted for the mod, especially for snow areas. This was removed later probably by AlumiuN himself, as it was buggy. But strong fog looks bad indoor, and it affected even designs of "Christmas pack" maps, as we allowed for the first time stronger fog in some maps - by removing indoor areas and making the map completely outdoor.

Turret was great AlumiuN code, which not only allowed overheating, but also gave the player partial bullet protection.Yes, most turrets were already placed before they became "interactive", and it made most of them quite unusable - things that we tried to "fix" in "Christmas" pack.

Eisen had many scrapped maps, which won't probably be ever released. Some unfinished, some of lesser quality... One of such was my "The Village" map revisited by RonWolf after he admitted this was best of my scrapped maps from the original "Eisenfaust" (so we share credit for it) - and it went into "Christmas pack".The obvious vision for the map was challenging yet non-linear sneaking into a village (with price to pay for bad sneaking), house to house fighting........Very different map from standard "Eisenfaust". I've made one apparently simular other map for "Christmas pack" (made it in my birthday spending most of it making the map) - map called "Focal Point" - but it was scrapped from "Christmas Pack" for numerious reasons, including being too simular to "The Village" in the game style.

Other map designed by myself and later heavily revisited by Dean was "The Entrance" bonus map from original "Eisenfaust". Dean liked very much my idea and design for the map, but being a mapping newbie it needed heavy revisiting by Dean to fit high Eisen standards and go in.

"The Cooler" from the "Christmas pack" was another map designed by myself and later revisited by RonWolf to make it fit high quality standards. The outside area originally was made by me in "Sokoban"-style, but after Ron's feedback I changed it copying and adjusting a very nice area from one of my other "scrapped from original Eisenfaust" map called "Mine Chart" (originally with no Boss inside and a bit different design).The map's concept was again non-linear map with many ways to finish it, many fast and timed choices, different pricetags for different roots, need for saving warm coats for later use and manage those wisely - and such ideas.

So Raycast's next mod is going to be WSJ-like? Me likey! I've wondered when someone would look into WSJ's Totenkopf SDL source code he released with the mod a while back. Could this be the reason why he released it?

I didn't said "next". I said "in development" (since January 2011). And we don't like talking about it or share details, and sure not screens. Which mod comes first to the finish line from all Team's mods in development - even we don't know ourselves, it's hard to say with such scale of projects.We have only 1 active coder (LinuxWolf) and we can't advance more than 1 mod at once coding-wise.Which brings some obvious limitations on development.As I mentioned - coding-wise LinuxWolf works currently on "Batman : No Man's Land".

We happen to have a huge collection of private feedbacks on "Eisenfaust" from basically almost every living known Wolfer, probably more feedbacks than any other Wolf3D mod.As at least some came by PM - I wonder if someone here would oppose the idea of posting those here in the future (or repost them himself given the original text), in edited form - to fit the context.

@WolfForever wrote:Some of the bonus levels (33-42), from an editor peek, do not look at all like they are short, one-minute par levels either.

Is this correct, or all those legitimately meant to be beaten in a minute?

"1 min" is just a default value meaning nothing more than we didn't do par times for those maps (unlike the story maps AFAIR). If someone is ready to make those par times for the maps - we'll include those in any of future re-releases or maybe will update even the current download.